Tourists in mind at Carlton Courts

Press, 19 March 1984, Page 8

Tourists in mind at Carlton Courts

Carlton Courts, at the corner of Bealey Avenue and Papanui Road, has been designed with Christchurch’s tourist trade in mind.

It features a brick courtyard faced by newly developed shops which the owner, Mr David Grose, and the manager, Mr Jack Joseph, hope to lease to artisans through a system of preferred tenancies.

The idea is that printmakers, potters, weavers, lead-lighters, leatherworkers, and the like will make and sell their products there in a carnival atmosphere created by live, outdoor entertainment.

To achieve this, theatre and dance groups, singers, and musicians will be en-

couraged to perform in the courtyard most of which is covered against the weather. Because it is private property, no busker’s licence will be needed but performers will be vetted to ensure that a satisfactory standard is maintained.

The complex, with the two-storey, refurbished building on the corner, includes 28 shops. Among them is a restaurant which will serve lunch and evening meals, some of them at outdoor tables.

Shopping hours will be extended to 6 p.m. on weekdays and Sunday trading will be encouraged to attract tourists and afterwork browsers. Different uses will be

fostered in different areas and a stated aim of the developers is that the shops facing the street should serve local residents.

Among them will be a late-night dairy. Mr Joseph said yesterday that not all of the retail sites had been let yet but that they might have been had the owner been "less selective.” He said that if Mr Grose was not choosy about whom he let space to, Carlton Courts would become “just another shopping centre” which would survive “and that is all.”

It was hoped that the complex would be open by Easter, he said. Car-parking is being developed at the rear of the property.